Hi,

This is a thread for anyone with suggestions, issues, radical ideas, etc. relating to the Mudbox user interface with a nod toward improving user interaction/usability.  Mudbox currently has a great UI and the goal of this thread is to look for places where improvements can be made without sacrificing the simple and straightforward UI we all find so appealing.

Initial thoughts on this were posted in a thread relating to the release of the 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack located here:

http://area.autodesk.com/blo...ack_new_features/comments

Here are a few of my thoughts cut & pasted:

Things like:
- Improved panel docking, more flexible positioning.
- Ability to save UI layout/prevent from resetting each time application starts
- Easier ‘snap to orthographic’ view (instead of looking through camera each time)
- Persistent camera bookmarks
- Properties panel cleaned up

“I would love a pop up tool properties dialogue box that could be triggered with a hotkey to access stuff like size/strength/falloff/etc. This is a feature found in every major painting/sculpting application that is sorely missing from Mudbox.”

“I use a Wacom Cintiq and I map Brush Size (B) and Strength (M) to both my pen buttons because I access those settings most often. This means I lose middle/right click but have compensated by adjusting my Pan & Zoom hotkeys to Alt-B and Alt-M so I can navigate without issue. I have to use the mouse sometimes to do some clicking - not such a big deal.”

“I really like the Sculptris popup settings where you get visual feedback for size, can adjust strength, enable masking, etc. in a simple, gestural way. I think Mudbox would benefit from something like this. It could be simple - strength & size sliders, BUILDUP SLIDER (sorely missing a hotkey like size/strength) checkbox for invert, mask toggle, stamp toggle, last tool toggle. Basically something that would save you from making a round trip to the Tool Properties panel, which isn’t as persistent as I would like because it shares space with other UI elements and their Properties. This would save you having to map all of your Wacom buttons to Tool settings or using Radial Menus. Also, it would be so much easier to work in EXPERT MODE with everything you need to sculpt is one hotkey away. Plus, imagine being able to access color on the fly when painting? I really think it is an option they need to look at including. I would map it to a Cintiq side button (the bottom left one) and be able to use my Pen buttons for middle/right click again. Sure, that’s just me and everyone is going to have a different setup that caters to them but like I said, there is a reason every other painting/sculpting application has this option - because people use it! I subscribe to the theory often used in web design that the fewer clicks and searching you have to make to get what you want, the better user experience you have.”

“Not being able to save the workspace really sucks for Cintiq (and probably all tablet) users. I am a righty so every time I want to select a tool I have to go across my body to the tools panel at the bottom left of the screen - very unintuitive. If you were a traditional artist you would put your brushes next to your canvas on your strong hand side, correct? In traditional art you don’t have to search for your tools, they are on the table next to you. One thing I will say for ZBrush is that you can customize the UI and get rid of most of the wonky UI crap. I use a setup very similar to this one:

lesterbanks.com/2010/08/zbrush-4-custom-user-interface-tutorial/

Note the Brush strip to the right of the viewport and the settings to the top of it (ignore the stuff on the way right, more ZBrush clutter) - this is the essential stuff and I can access it with minimal movement.”

“I really like the Mari beta UI - very well conceived and flexible. There are some videos floating around on YouTube that show the docking capability and the well-thought out presentation. The paint tool options are very impressive - Scratchpad! Built in preset menus, project preset menus and personal preset menus all presented very clearly/cleanly. Also - there is a customizable ‘pie’ pop-up that is very useful and must be seen in action.”

“Reg. Popups - I like some of your suggestions for what should be included. I am hoping this is a feature added down the line. Mudbox lists a tablet as recommended hardware so they clearly endorse using one as the main sculpting instrument. The less I am chained to a keyboard while working the better. We only have so many buttons on a tablet and I am just looking for a way to access key settings with a single hotkey on the fly in a space localized to where my brush tip is at any given moment.”

Hope people will add some comments and push for some fixes, especially for docking panels, the ability to save a customized UI, and a popup option.  Thanks!

-NBreslow

great suggestions..!

my vote goes for custom marking menues and the ability to save UI layouts…
take the maya marking menue system and the hotbox...!

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-schaedl/6/558/73b

Agree on customizable UI, saving UI docks and Easier ‘snap to orthographic’ view, at the risk of being hounded down, dare I say the View Cube…

Maya HotBox type of solution for Brush Size, Strength, etc (using space bar like Maya which can be mapped to a button on the Wacom Cintiq) would be nice for an option to respect right-handed, left-handed or don’t care, to ensure the menu is not covered by a users hand.

Thanks to all the devs, Great work on the Subscription Advantage Pack.

Digital Entertainment Creation Suite 2010, 2011, 2012

Falloff Thumbnail Preview and Preset Placement

I think that a thumbnail icon representing a ‘top down view’ of the brush falloff next to the curve editor would would be a nice touch to really get a quick, intuitive feel for how the brush is going to influence the geometry.  The feedback in the thumbnail could use alpha channel (b&w).

I think this should be removed from the bottom tray and moved as an option inside any tool that uses it.  It is the only property that has to be selected outside the ‘Properties’ panel and seems out of place.  Maybe a Preset flyout should be used to select built in/user falloffs.

-NBreslow

pleeeeeeeease no hotboxes!!! :)
edit:unless it is something like inventor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qxMnbEG75Y

i kind of like the cube idea. this is an interface that it could fit and appear helpful for some. BUT it should appear wherever you want it. preferably under your brush tip like a shortcut for views and handling. being static in a corner doesn’t help much and it’s boring to go up and forth.

I copy paste my ideas without the extra blah from the link that Nick posted.
==============================================================================================

brush selection or falloff coming under the tip of the brush in a mini strip.

i would love to have a tiny mix colour palette floating in screen space
like i keep my colours in photoshop on a corner of the page or like the mix palette in painter.

what i would like to see is when i am changing tools in expert mode is a quick visual confirmation that indeed the brush has changed (and which is it) or the falloff mode i am using by briefly displaying its icon.

perhaps a quick “go to last tool” hotkey would be handy for the lazy days :)

something a bit more complex than that,
is 1-2 slots for an arbitrary temporary tool to use with a combo like it happens with smooth for example. this way i would be able to to have lets say.. wax with ctrl+shift or even one more,
with alt+shift i.e. grab. or any other tool i prefer defined from a drop down menu in the preferences or hotkeys menu.

personalized UI would be great. workspaces like photoshop.
i am sure that the option to bring the east panel west would be welcome for many users
(maybe it’s already there? never tried it)

.:bugs bug me

Good link to the inventor video!

That is the kind of thing I am talking about, a customizable pie.  It would be great if it had a little more functionality than just a bunch of icons with a single function (it looks like the inventor one has more to it than that which is cool).  If you could have the option of interacting with the icon like dragging over it to change brush size or clicking it to get a marking menu with more options that would be great.  It could be as simple/complicated as you want - totally customizable.  THis type of menu is what makes working in a program like sketchbook pro so much fun.  The Maya hotbox is OK but I think they can do a little better.  At the very least it would be nice to get some sort of marking menu localized to the brush tip so you wouldn’t have to make a round trip to the not so persistent properties panel all the time.

-NBreslow

Edit:  Here is a screen capture of the inventor pie menu.

	Attachment

I did a quick mockup of a reworked properties panel.  These are the things that I thought could be improved:

-Make justification uniform
-Consolidate panels
-Reorganize some elements based on importance/relation to one another
-Stamp is now preview of stroke
-Consolidate falloff presets into falloff panel

Let me know what you think!

Image of original and my version:

	Attachment

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Nice suggestions NBreslow!

Here are some notes I’ve made in the past…

-SAVE ALL PREFERENCES. This has been a bug bear of mine for a long time. Mudbox doesn’t remember such things as mouse sensitivity settings, layer data columns, UI alterations (eg altering the order of the tabs in bottom right menu containing falloffs etc, the resizing the thumbnail window in the image browser).

-Have a hotkey to toggle between track ball and standard camera navigation so you can switch on the fly. I generally use standard navigation but in certain situation trackball can be very useful.

-in the stamp and stencil pallettes have larger thumbnail popups in the same way as happens with the material presets, additionally a preferences setting for the delays of these popups, the delay is too long for some (name/location info for stamps/stencils).

-options to make the HUD persistant and extra info options one i would specifically like to see is which layer you are sculpting on

-Adjustable thumbnail size in image browser

-simple file operations in the image browser

-save image to stamp/stencil presets tray, button in the image browser

-for objects, display the assigned material in the information column

-select multiple paint/sculpt layers for various operations eg delete layers, merge selected

-In Mudbox 2011 a great idea was to have the number keys associated with the consecutive tool icons in whichever tool/brush palette tab was currently displayed.

It would be useful if each tool palette tab had a hotkey then any tool/brush would be accessible with the use of only two hotkeys.

You could do this with a marking menuspie style menu too.

* any way to fix/ignore scale relationships? so things wont have to be scaled x30-200 from maya’s default units? 

1.being able to draw a stencil/mask with the existing curve tool..to close a shape. so you can affect anything inside the shape or outside not just have the pen snap to it. also it currently doesnt work that great with paint strokes only with sculpting!

2.mouse mode to work properly! so the stamping and brush stroke/intensity/sensitivity works as it does with pen mode with tablets!

3. being able to paint on tris/ngons would be very useful which also creates artifacts when sending to photoshop

4. being able to generate or take a normal map texture and then painting/placing them on your model with projection tool mudbox AND it will auto align the vectors so the normal map is placed in the right direction to it’s origin!..otherwise(as it is now) it is useless unless u project it exactly the same directions as it was generated.. would be nice to project details like you can with the vector displacement but with normal maps.

5. being able to open an attribute of anything in a new window and have it visible at all times even when you deselect/select something else. this way you can turn on/off objects/textures/ change camera and imageplane values without selecting/opening it up back/forth.

6. horrible refresh bugs when turning on a texture/shaded mode sometimes with gforce cards and windows 7

7. super important one! being able to assign multiple objects selected a material! right now you have to go 1 by 1 and assign..super annoying with 100+ objects. also allowing to delete used materials, once deleted objects with that deleted material get the default mudbox material.

8. being able to create/paint/export a mask texture file for each texture files, just like you can in ps.i know you can mask now but it would be easier to use a mask texture. also if it’s possible to allow the same texture in many slots(this connects my mask texture request) so you can use the same mask texture for bump, reflection, color..but each of those slots can have a different color texture affected by the same mask. to save memory so you wont have to load the same mask texture 3 times in mem.

9. painting bump manually is great..however!, usually due to scale, it tends to clip the brush stroke as it does on sculpting in general btw, often.. unless the model is VERY large comparing to strokes. often i find i end up with a x200 model scaled up from maya’s native units and even then the brush strength at 1.0 is too strong! once this happens most of the strokes get clipped and somethings arent useful like..painting bumps with soft brushes is impossible.

http://www.galroiter.com

Great comments all - keep them coming.  Here are some I definately scnd from the last two posts:

ianucci
-SAVE ALL PREFERENCES
-options to make the HUD persistant and extra info options one i would specifically like to see is which layer you are sculpting on
-simple file operations in the image browser
-Adjustable thumbnail size in image browser
-select multiple paint/sculpt layers for various operations eg delete layers, merge selected

galrt
* any way to fix/ignore scale relationships? so things wont have to be scaled x30-200 from maya’s default units? 
5. being able to open an attribute of anything in a new window and have it visible at all times even when you deselect/select something else. this way you can turn on/off objects/textures/ change camera and imageplane values without selecting/opening it up back/forth.
9. painting bump manually is great..however!, usually due to scale, it tends to clip the brush stroke as it does on sculpting in general btw, often.. unless the model is VERY large comparing to strokes. often i find i end up with a x200 model scaled up from maya’s native units and even then the brush strength at 1.0 is too strong! once this happens most of the strokes get clipped and somethings arent useful like..painting bumps with soft brushes is impossible.

-NBreslow

Snap Rotation

A feature I miss that ZBrush/Sculptris have is snap rotation.  They both have the capability to rotate with a hotkey pressed to snap the object at 0, 90, 180, 270 degrees in the viewport.  This works whether you are rotating up/down or left/right.  In the initial blocking phase of any model I am constantly working in these pseudo-orthographic positions and find it frustrating that Mudbox doesn’t have this ability.  Maya has the ‘viewcube’ which I do not use and do not want on Mudbox, but it also has the ‘j’ hotkey to use while rotating with snap that I do use a lot.  I think this feature is sorely missing.

Currently you have to travel to the objects list, cameras, ‘Look through camera’ to access an orthographic view.  The problem is you wind up with these views at different zoom levels, depending on where you last had the camera positioned last.  Of course you can create Camera Bookmarks, however these will always bring you back to a specified zoom level as well.

I think a great solution would be a hotkey for ‘view snap’ and a way to specify the amount of degrees between snapping.

-NBreslow